Samsung isn't too proud to admit when it's not measuring up to the competition. At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), Samsung touted its new Galaxy Note, but mentioned that the company isn't exactly thriving in the tablet arena.

MWC is the world's largest mobile exhibition in the industry. It features top tech executives as well as mobile operators, device manufacturers, vendors and technology providers. Tech companies are mainly there to show off their latest and greatest products, but Samsung injected a dose of honesty into its presentation.

"Honestly, we're not doing very well in the tablet market," said Hank Yoon, product strategy executive for Samsung.

Samsung has struggled trying to catch up with Apple's ever-popular iPad, which originally released back in April 2010. The iPad 2 followed in March 2011, and the iPad 3 will be introduced next Wednesday at an event in San Francisco, California.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

But competition with Apple hasn't been Samsung's only problem. Being attacked by Apple with lawsuits is a whole different situation that started last April and continues today. Apple originally sued Samsung for patent infringement regarding devices like the Galaxy S 4G, pic 4G, Nexus smartphones and the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Apple managed to successfully ban the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in both Australia and Germany, but Samsung pulled a few punches of its own and lifted the ban in Australia last December.

In addition to the Apple-related problems, Samsung is trailing behind tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire, which is categorized in the "more affordable" tablet realm. The Kindle Fire launched last November and quickly became a hot holiday gift item.

Some believe Samsung's overall production and sales strategies regarding its tablets were all wrong as well. CNET called it a "shotgun approach," where Samsung initially introduced a 7-inch version of the Galaxy Tab, then moved up to the 10.1-inch, and continued making all the sizes in between after that just to experiment with what customers like.

But Samsung's MWC presentation wasn't all doom and gloom. The company was happy to talk about its new Galaxy Note, which is a 5-inch smartphone that also acts as a tablet with a stylus called the S-Pen. In fact, Samsung expects to ship 10 million 5-inch Galaxy Notes. In addition, a 10-inch Galaxy Note is expected to replace the current 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab.

Apple's litigation is silly mainly because they have no competition in the tablet market either way. To think that the current split between iOS and Android tablet sales exists even a little bit because of litigation is silly.

The lead that the iPad has in terms of app ecosystem and developer support, raw performance and hardware speed (most people don't know hardware specs or benchmarks but they do know when the interface or an app is smooth), and global mindshare (Amazon is the only legit competitor in this regard, and they are only selling a crippled device right now) are all huge hurdles for any competitor to get over, and this is even before talking about litigation over Samsung's designs.

This is about as massive as the gulf between Windows and desktop Linux. A few people will get the Linux desktop for whatever reason, but the leader in terms of performance, applications, developers, and centralized support is still Windows. The same parallel applies to the iPad and Honeycomb/ICS tablets.